EgyptIslamist militants kill more than 60 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai attacks

At least sixty Egyptian soldiers have been killed so far in several coordinated attacks this morning by ISIS militants on Egyptian military positions and political buildings in the Sinai Peninsula. The attacks, which according to Egyptian sources involved more than seventy Islamists, included the simultaneous explosion of car bombs and at several locations.

Haaretz reports that several of the attacks took place just south of the town of Sheikh Zuweid, and targeted at least six military checkpoints. The militants have also captured the municipality buildings and several residential buildings near it, and are engaged in heavy firefights with Egyptian security forces. The militants refused to let civilians leave the buildings they have captured, using them as human shields. They have also refused to allow the wounded soldiers and civilians to be evacuated for medical treatment.

The militants have also attacked targets in El Arish and Rafah. They took several Egyptian soldiers with them, seized armored vehicles, and captured large quantities of arms at several depots.

On Monday, Islamists used a powerful car bomb in Cairo to assassinate Hisham Barakat, the country’s chief prosecutor. On Tuesday, president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, vowed to step up a two-year crackdown against Islamists.

Islamists militants in northern Sinai, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip, have battled the Egyptian security forces for years. Until 2012, they cleverly exploited the grievances and sense of marginalization of the Bedouin inhabitants of Sinai, but after the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt in June 2012, the Islamists more openly proclaimed their affiliation with the larger Islamist movement in the Arab world. After the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power in July 2013, and after thousands of the movement’s followers were killed and jailed and it was banned, the Islamists in Sinai expanded their activity inside Egypt, getting support from some of the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The assassinated chief prosecutors led the prosecution which ended in the death penalties given to Mohammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader and former prime minister, and to hundreds of Brotherhood leaders and members. In his tough Tuesday speech, Sisi pledged to carry out justice for the prosecutor general’s assassination – which some analysts read to mean that he will push for the swift execution of Morsi and at least some of the hundreds of Brotherhood members who are now on death row.

The difficulty in countering the Islamists’ growing assertiveness in Sinai is the result of two facts.

First, the 1982 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel restricts Egypt’s military presence in Sinai. Although Israel has allowed the relaxation of these restrictions for specific Egyptian military operations, it now appears that the two countries would have to renegotiate some of these restrictions in order to allow a larger Egyptian military presence in the large, sparsely populated Sinai.

The second factor is that out of respect for Egypt’s sovereignty, Israel has so fat not brought its own military might, and its considerable experience, to the fight against the growing Islamist menace in Sinai. It may well be time for the two countries to agree not only for an increased Egyptian military presence in the Sinai, but for Israeli military operations there – or, better yet, joint Israeli-Egyptian operations.